Transcript Monday, Mar. 20

HUI216
Italian Civilization
Andrea Fedi
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16.0 Announcements
• http://www.campo7.com/hui216/
• All the audio files of the lectures from weeks 7 and
8 have been added to the class Web page
• Required readings of week 9 have been posted
• The review session is scheduled for Wednesday,
Mar. 22
• The midterm will be on March 27, for students with
last names beginning A-K; on March 29, for
students with last names beginning L-Z
• The questions will be based on the topics introduced
from the beginning of the semester up to Mar. 15 (weeks
1-8, topics 1.1-15.1)
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16.1 The Roman poet Lucretius (99/94-55/51
BCE)
• The exact dates of his birth and death, reported
differently by IV- and V-century Christian
scholars, are not known
• He came from a wealthy Northern Italian family
• He went to study Greek philosophy in Naples, a
city which had been a Greek colony (its ancient
name, Neapolis, means "new city" in Greek), and
had maintained through the centuries its status of
cultural center of southern Italy, with a particular
emphasis on the Greek roots of that area's
culture
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16.1 The life and death of Roman poet
Lucretius
• According to Latin sources, he wrote his
masterpiece poem, On the Nature of Things,
"per intervalla insaniae" (=during the
intermissions of his insanity)
• According to tradition, he became crazy after
drinking a love potion (cf. Tennyson's poem):
modern scholars have argued that he might
have suffered from manic depression
• The great Cicero (lawyer, politician, intellectual
and master of the art of rhetoric), edited and
published the poem after Lucretius's death (it
was suicide, according to tradition)
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16.2 Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
• This poem was not written with the intention of
entertaining the readers with a piece of aesthetically
beautiful literature; it is a didactic poem, composed to
teach about a particular vision of nature and the world
• Lucretius's poem shows the great influence that Greek
culture (especially literature, philosophy and
historiography) had on Roman civilization
• The poem was inspired by the ideas of Greek
philosophers such as Democritus (460/70-370/61 BCE)
and Epicurus
• Democritus believed that everything in nature is the result of the
combination of atoms (the smallest indivisible particles of
matter) and void
• He also believed that our five senses are stimulated by atoms:
we see because small atoms travel from the object that we see
to our eyes, we hear because atoms enter our ears, etc.
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16.2 On the Nature of Things: atomism
• You may learn more about Lucretius'
essential role in the preservation and the
transmission of the ancient theories of
atomism, and about the relevance that those
theories had during the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and into the 19th-century,
when you read passages from chapter 1 of
the 2001 book written by David Lindley,
entitled Boltzmann's Atom: The Great
Debate That Launched A Revolution In
Physics, posted in the site of the Washington
Post
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16.2 Lucretius and Epicurus
• Epicurus (341-271 BCE), another Greek philosopher
that Lucretius had studied in Naples, developed
Democritus's ideas (especially in the field of ethics)
• Epicurus believed that men should seek the maximum of
pleasure (which is to be found through the use of
moderation in all areas of life), the minimum of pain
• He wanted to dispel fear of death, and the fear of the gods
• He thought that gods might exist in the intermundia, spaces
with rarefied matter found between the planets
• Therefore the gods could not possibly care about humans,
and had no interest in punishing or rewarding them
• Avoidance of politics was considered to be a safe measure
by Roman Epicureans, while members of the Roman elite
who subscribed to the Stoic philosophy emphasized
selflessness and the highest respect for morals and for
social duties
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16.3 The ancient Romans and religion
• The poet Lucretius's perspective on the traditional
practices and beliefs of the pagan religion was not really
unique
• Even some of the great Roman authors condemned and
satirized widespread superstition in Roman society, and
exposed the superficiality of a relationship with the
supernatural based mostly on material exchanges:
sacrifices in return for good health, happiness and
prosperity
• The first Christians, and the "Fathers of the Church" later
on finished the job, so to speak, attacking pagan religions
with no mercy, to the point of losing perspective entirely
• Roman religion may have been somewhat primitive, but it was a
religion nonetheless, a legitimate attempt to fill up needs and
answer questions that each individual may have
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16.3 The religion of ancient Romans: sacrificial
offerings
• Rituals such as those of the Romans, especially sacrificial
offerings, can acquire a very deep meaning and value
• In the case of the Romans, though, their religious practices
are often considered 'primitive' not because those practices
involved sacrificing animals, which is common in many
religions to this day
• The problem (if you want to call it that), in the case of Roman
religion, is the almost completely mechanical approach to the
sacrifice, the fact that the ritual itself could mean little or
nothing to the person who performed it, and still be presumed
to be 'effective': this undoubtedly is closer to superstition or
magic (following the meaning of this term in popular fiction and
fables), than to religion
• This lack of spiritual depth, of a more personal connection with
their divinities, in the end, really contributed to the decline of
Paganism and facilitated the success of Christian religion in
many areas of the empire
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16.3 Religion as a social practice in ancient
Rome
• Religion, in Roman society, was for the most part a
social or formal practice, rather than a personal,
deep spiritual experience
• Private rituals were performed to thank or
ingratiate the gods: their success and their value
did not really depend on the personal beliefs or the
faith of the individual who performed that ritual
• Rather it is the ritual itself that seems to have had
a quasi-magical power
• Apotropaic formulae and gestures, in the private
life of the Romans, were apparently more common
than personal prayers
• apotropaic is an adjective that designates a ritual, a
formula or a gesture used to prevent bad luck or to
defend from evil forces
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16.3 Superstition -- Ethics, religion and politics
• the Romans believed in the evil eye, as many Italians of
today do (although this belief was later combined with
Christian elements and symbols: oil, water, the time and
place for the transmission of the apotropaic formulae
etc.)
• archeological excavations have unearthed ancient
Roman amulets shaped like a hand, making gestures
that are exactly those used today in some areas of Italy
• Ethics in Roman society was supported largely by
philosophy, by the social values and the law, rather
than by religion alone
• Religion was often intertwined with politics
• From a wall inscription in Pompeii (ca. 79 CE): "The
worshipers of Isis as a body ask for the election of
Gnaeus Helvias Sabinus as Aedile"
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16.4 Seneca and the practice of selfexamination, from his work On anger
• All our senses ought to be trained to endurance.
They are naturally long-suffering, if only the mind
desists from weakening them. This should be
summoned to give an account of itself every day.
• Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over
and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put
these questions to his soul: "What bad habit have
you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In
what respects are you better?“
• Anger will cease and become controllable if it finds
that it must appear before a judge every day. Can
anything be more excellent that this practice of
thoroughly sifting the whole day?
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16.4 Seneca and the practice of selfexamination, from his work On anger
• And how delightful the sleep that follows this
self-examination--how tranquil it is, how deep
and untroubled, when the soul has either
praised or admonished itself, and when this
secret examiner and critic of self has given
report of its own character!
• I avail myself of this privilege, and every day I
plead my cause before the bar of self.
• When the light has been removed from sight,
and my wife, long aware of my habit, has
become silent, I scan the whole of my day and
retrace all my deeds and words.
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16.4 Seneca and the practice of selfexamination, from his work On anger
• I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing. For why
should I shrink from any of my mistakes, when I may
commune thus with my self?
• "See what you never do that again; I will pardon you
this time. In that dispute you spoke too offensively;
after this don't have encounters with ignorant people;
those who have never learned do not want to learn.
• You reproved that man more frankly than you ought,
and consequently you have not so much mended him
as offended him. In the future, consider not only the
truth of what you say, but also whether the man to
whom you are speaking can endure the truth. A good
man accepts reproof gladly; the worse a man is the
more bitterly he resents it"
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16.4 Seneca and self-examination, from the
philosophical dialogue On the tranquillity of the soul
• SERENUS: When I made examination of myself, it
became evident, Seneca, that some of my vices are
uncovered and displayed so openly that I can put my
hand upon them, some are more hidden and lurk in a
corner, some are not always present but recur at
intervals; and I should say that the last are by far the
most troublesome, being like roving enemies that spring
upon one when the opportunity offers, and allow one
neither to be ready as in war, nor to be off guard as in
peace. Nevertheless the state in which I find myself most
of all--for why should I not admit the truth to you as to a
physician? --is that I have neither been honestly set free
from the things I hated and feared, nor, on the other
hand, am I in bondage to them; while the condition in
which I am placed is not the worst, yet I am complaining
and fretful--I am neither sick nor well.
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16.5 Cato the Elder, The Harvest Ritual, circa
160 BCE
• Before the harvest the sacrifice of the pig must be offered
in this manner
• Offer a sow... to Ceres before you harvest spelt, wheat,
barley, beans, and turnip seed
• Offer a prayer, with incense and wine, to Janus, Jupiter
and Juno, before offering the sow
• Offer a pile of cakes to Janus, saying, "Father Janus, in
offering these cakes to you, I humbly pray that you will be
propitious and merciful to me and my children, my house
and my household."
• Then make an offering of cake to Jupiter with these
words: "In offering you this cake, O Jupiter, I humbly pray
that you, pleased with this offering, will be propitious and
merciful to me and my children, my house and my
household."
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16.5 The prayer of Scipio Africanus (Livy,
History of Rome, bk. XXIX, 27, 1-4)
• As a military expedition is about to set sail to attack
Carthage in 204 BCE, the Roman general Scipio Africanus,
offers to the Roman Gods the following prayer
• Ye gods and goddesses, who inhabit the seas and the lands, I
supplicate and beseech you that whatever has been done under
my command, or is being done, or will later be done, may turn
out to my advantage and to the advantage of the people and the
commons of Rome, the allies, and the Latins who by land or sea
or on rivers follow me, [accepting] the leadership, the authority,
and the auspices of the Roman people; that you will support
them and aid them with your help; that you will grant that,
preserved in safety and victorious over the enemy, arrayed in
booty and laden with spoils, you will bring them back with me in
triumph to our homes; that you will grant us the power to take
revenge upon our enemies and foes; and that you will grant to
me and the Roman people the power to enforce upon the
Carthaginians what they have planned to do against our city, as
an example of [divine] punishment.
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16.5 Actual inscriptions from Roman temples
• Thanks to Jupiter Leto, that my wife bore a child
• Thanks to Silvanus, from a vision, for freedom from
slavery
• Thanks to Jupiter, that my taxes were lessened
• Am I to be sold?
• Shall I get the money?
• Is my lover who is away from home alive?
• Am I to profit by the transaction?
• Is my property to be put up at auction?
• Shall I be appointed as an ambassador?
• Am I to become a senator?
• Am I to be divorced from my wife?
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16.5 Certificate of sacrifice to the traditional
pagan gods (250 CE)
• To the Commissioners of Sacrifice of the Village of
Alexander's Island [Egypt]
• From Aurelius Diogenes, the son of Satabus, of the
Village of Alexander's Island, age 72....
• I have always sacrificed regularly to the gods, and
now, in your presence, in accordance with the edict, I
have done sacrifice, and poured the drink offering, and
tasted of the sacrifices, and I request you to certify the
same...
• Handed in by me, Aurelius Diogenes
• I certify that I saw him sacrificing... [signature]
• Done in the first year of the Emperor, Caesar Gaius
Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius Pius Felix
Augustus... [June 26, 250 CE]
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16.5 Certificate of
pagan sacrifice
ca. 250 CE
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